Our last field trip for the year, Taughannock Falls State Park. Despite the rain we still got a great look at the falls and managed a short up up the gorge as well!

All the best,

Arne van Leuken

More pictures from our trip to Buttermilk Falls State Park.

All the best,

Arne van Leuken

What a great visit to Greenstar! Thank you Empar for taking the time and sharing the delicious treats!

Arne van Leuken

What a great bunch of videos we have here . . .

Our Principal, Ms. Sloan, reading "Please Baby Please" by Spike and Tanya Lewis Lee to us this past Wednesday:

Eating strawberries at story time:

Azariah and Justice reading together:

Marvelous!

Arne

What an amazing trip to the Johnson Museum.
First, one of the docents came to visit us in our classroom to tell us about the musuem.

And then we went!

Arne van Leuken

Hi Everyone-



Making day lillies out of tissue paper with Katie . . .

An incredibly attentive audience sits for Jennifer, our Librarian.

Mr. Jeff leads us in "airplane" exercises . . .

What a great week!

Arne van Leuken

Some great block creations

Hi All-

Check out these pictures that Jen took this week.

Here we have the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Azariah!

Captained by David. Assistant Azariah. Passenger Malik. Chief Builder Justice.

Have a great weekend,

Arne van Leuken

Playing the drums!

Hi Everyone-
I had a busy week attending meetings and trainings and we were fortunate to have Michael stand in. He teamed up with Azariah's drum machine and orchestrated some great playing for story time. Note how quiet and attentive the students are! Very impressive!

Also, check out the calender and the letter of the week posters in the background. You can just make out the "Spongebob" which came from the whole pineapple discussion we had this week.

'Nuff said, enjoy the drum videos . . .

Picture:















Videos:

Zola's turn-

Seokyun's turn-

Justice's turn-

(I like the part where Mike tells everyone to put a marshmallow in their mouth-such a great way to say "please be quiet").

Have a great weekend!

Arne van Leuken

4/10/09

The day before spring break and we had a great time playing and socializing in the gym with the mats. What fun!

Arne van Leuken

Playing together

4/3/09

Playing with trains. I was so excited to see your children playing so well together. I appreciate how intensely they're approaching their work, the way they play so close to each other and respect each other's space, and the way they're all respecting each other's "visions" for how they want the tracks and trains to go. This is harder than it looks. As they learn to do this well they're building the skills to take it to the next level in kindergarten.

Arne van Leuken

Friday activities

Hi Everyone!

Today, Friday, we played in the gym. It was especially exciting as the mats are out for a limited time only. Jennifer is taking the video as Sue, our speech therapist, guides the students from the jump off point.

From Thursday this week, here's Katie doing a fingerpainting activity of a large piece of cardboard that we plan to use for making secret hide outs.

Arne van Leuken

A day in the Caterpiallar's room

Hi Everyone-

Here are some great little clips of "Choice time" the way I wish it always was: small groups of students quietly engaged in a variety of great hands on activities. You'll see Jennifer working on the weekly art activity, Dekhari(visiting 6th grader from ACS) doing some quiet reading, and Katie coloring with students.

The reality though is that it's often quiet hectic and all over the place-but that's preschool! But what you see here are the moments we're continually aiming for.

Have a great 3 day break and we'll see your wonderful children on Monday again,

Arne van Leuken

Coconuts!

Coconuts!

We learned a lot about the letter C . . . and I think

that shaking, rolling, and smashing in open were the best parts!

Arne van Leuken

2/29/09

Hi everyone!

Building with blocks. In my opinion, we can't spend enough time working with blocks. The imagination and interpretive skills that go into designing these fantastic creations are the precursors to reading, mathematics, and beyond. This is where it starts. Check out the video clip at the end.

Arne van Leuken

PreKindergarten Teacher

February 9, 2009

Hi Everyone-

We're learning all about the letter A this week:

Tuesday's "mystery snack" was a real feat:

Ants stuck in mud in the jungle . . . or raisins in peanut butter on a celery stick!

First I made a little sketch for the students to guess . . .

And then we munched on them. I was pleasantly surprised as everybody liked it, or at least found some part of it that they liked.

Now even though we do spend time every week getting to know the letters of the alphabet, we spend a lot of time doing what I call "good preschool play". What does that mean? In my mind, good preschool play, is playing with items that have lots of possibilities, encourage creativity, sharing with others, encourage learning, move the hands and body, etc.

A video of David, Justice, and Carter exploring one

of our new manipulatives called "Wedgits"!!!!!!!

What a great week,

Arne van Leuken

February 3rd, 2009

Hi Everyone-
Welcome to the first posting of my new blog. I'll be updating this regularly with themes and projects that we're working on in the classroom. I'l also be sending home paper copies of this every Friday.

This week we've been learning about "H is for Horses".

Here we are signing "horse" in sign language. We also made the horse sound by exhaling and vibrating our lips, that's why you see a lot of lip in these pictures!

Here we're doing our quiet reading at the end of mystery food story time:

And coloring pictures of horses:

And that marks the end of my first posting ever!

More to come soon,

Arne van Leuken

PreK Teacher at Belle Sherman Elementary School